The audio engine is, unfortunately, also a little buggy. Enabling hardware acceleration has a tendency to warp the audio for certain players, and ruin the framerates of others. There are also some odd times where certain effects, like weapon noises will be incredibly quiet, even if someone sticks a gun to the character's face and pulls the trigger. News has it that, again, a patch is in the works to try and fix this, but it appears that an unreliable testing process (or a rushed release - most likely the latter) is to blame for a quirky product once again. What parts of the audio do function properly work great, however, and there's some really nice ambience when you're sneaking through a war zone with artillery and bullets flying around everywhere. Some maps even have destroyable speaker towers spouting propaganda - "Stars and Stripes Radio" for the American side, and general Vietcong commentary for the bad guys. One really cool function the developers also included is a "radio" connected to any vehicle, so players bored on a long ride can hit a key on their keyboard to bring up a radio dialogue, where they can select some pre-set Vietnam-era tunes to blare over the vehicle's radio for everyone else to hear. There's even the ability to add custom MP3s to this list, but other players will not hear the same music, sadly. I definitely have to give DICE props for the propaganda/vehicular radio thing, but I really wish the sound engine wasn't so buggy, as it's proving to be a big pain in the ass for people who can't get the game to run properly.

Battlefield Vietnam looks to be a pretty bitchin' title in its own right, but is it a decent successor to the venerable Battlefield 1942? Players sick of dealing with stupid people who enjoy stealing aircraft and smashing them into the ground shortly after takeoff will probably want to stay away (though I hear that, once again, this issue will be resolved somehow in an upcoming patch by some manner of punishment system for players who camp vehicle spawns), but everyone else who wants to check out an awesome online experience will probably want to get in on it. With the inclusion of a fully accessible level editing utility included with the game, as well as the capacity to accept third party modifications, Battlefield Vietnam is probably going to make as big an impact as Battlefield 1942 did, and I look forward to seeing it really take off once custom game types start being released. I came to see Charlie, but I think I'm going to stay for the thrill of hauling boats around via chopper tow-cable. Wahoo!